LEGEND by David A. Gemmell

During the past fifteen years Druss had not been inactive. He had wandered various lands, leading battle companies for minor princelings. Last winter he had retired to his high mountain retreat, there to think and die. He had long known he would die in his sixtieth year – even before the seer’s prediction all those decades ago. He had been able to picture himself at sixty – but never beyond. Whenever he tried to consider the prospects of being sixty-one, he would experience only darkness.

His gnarled hands curled round a wooden goblet and raised it to his grey bearded lips. The wine was strong, brewed himself five years before; it had aged well – better than he. But it was gone and he remained . . . for a little while.

The heat within his sparse furnished cabin was growing oppressive as the new spring sun warmed the wooden roof. Slowly he removed the sheepskin jacket he had worn all winter and the under-vest of horsehair. His massive body, criss-crossed with scars, belied his age. He studied the scars, remem­bering clearly the men whose blades had caused them: men who would never grow old as he had; men who had died in their prime beneath his singing axe. His blue eyes flicked to the wall by the small wooden door. There she hung, Snaga, which in the old tongue meant the Sender. Slim haft of black steel, interwoven with eldritch runes in silver thread, and a double-edged blade so shaped that it sang as it slew.

Even now he could hear its sweet song. One last time, Soul brother, it called to him. One last bloody day before the sun sets. His mind returned to Delnar’s letter. It was written to the memory and not the man.

Druss raised himself from the wooden chair, curs­ing as his joints creaked. ‘The sun has set,’ whispered the old warrior, addressing the axe. ‘Now only death waits and he’s a patient bastard.’ He walked from the cabin, gazing out over the distant mountains. His massive frame and grey-black hair mirrored in miniature the mountains he surveyed. Proud, strong, ageless and snow-topped, they defied the spring sun as it strove to deny them their winter peaks of virgin snow.

Druss soaked in their savage splendour, sucking in the cool breeze and tasting life, as if for the last time.

‘Where are you, Death?’ he called. ‘Where do you hide on this fine day?’ The echoes boomed around the valleys . . . DEATH, DEATH, Death, Death . . . DAY, DAY, Day, Day . . .

‘I am Druss! And I defy you!’

A shadow fell across Druss’s eyes, the sun died in the heavens and the mountains receded into mist. Pain clamped Druss’s mighty chest, soul deep, and he almost fell.

‘Proud mortal!’ hissed a sibilant voice through the veils of agony. ‘I never sought you. You have hunted me through these long, lonely years. Stay on this mountain and I guarantee you two score more years. Your muscles will atrophy, your brain will sink into dotage. You will bloat, old man, and I will only come when you beg it.

‘Or will the huntsman have one more hunt?’

‘Seek me if you will, old warrior. I stand on the walls of Dros Delnoch.’

The pain lifted from the old man’s heart. He stag­gered once, drew soothing mountain air into his burning lungs and gazed about him. Birds still sang in the pine, no clouds obscured the sun and the mountains stood, tall and proud, as they always had done.

Druss returned to the cabin and went to a chest of oak, padlocked at the onset of winter. The key lay deep in the valley below. He placed his giant hands about the lock and began to exert pressure. Muscles writhed on his arms; veins bulged on his neck and shoulders; and the metal groaned, changed shape and – split! Druss threw the padlock aside and opened the chest. Within lay a jerkin of black leather, the shoulders covered in a skin of shining steel, and a black leather skull-cap only relieved by a silver axe flanked by silver skulls. Long black leather gauntlets came into view, silver-skinned to the knuckles. Swiftly he dressed, coming finally to the long leather boots – a present from Abalayn himself so many years before.